Saturday, 28 February 2009

From the state of the union speech this week....we got various statements of wit, charm, intelligence and stupidity.

I watched the clip of the episode and sat through all the words.

There was this magic moment when the discussion turned to a math item....numbers....that I sat there and scratched my head. There was this glowing comment of "95 percent of the working households in America will receive a tax cut."

There are an awful lot of folks who file, and pay zero. And you simply can't get plus zero or bumped-up zero or zero-on-top-of-zero.

This is mathematically of a impossible nature.

IRS even admits this.

There were apparently over 138 million families filing income tax returns in 2006. The amazing thing is that 93 million of them actually paid any tax. We are talking about 45 million folks who paid nothing. Almost a third of these folks paid nothing and got nothing.

So, in the math sense.....you can't cut taxes on on 95 percent of the folks in America....if one third of them don't even pay taxes.....right?

Well....in an imaginary world where political figures with no common sense exist....maybe you can imagine everyone paying taxes, getting imaginary tax credits and thus getting imaginary money back. Zero taken from zero, would then equal zero.....and maybe its a plus-zero, which is even better.

I sat in a class in Bama once....eighth grade math....where someone was forced into going up to the board and writing a math problem. At the end.....they pronounced the answer as "plus-zero". The instructor sat there in disbelief and then asked if it was possible to get a "minus-zero". There was this long pause, and the girl responded yes, and then wiped the plus away and put in a minus. I had the impression that she thought he was giving a tip that she was slightly wrong and corrected her original answer.

He sat there for 30 seconds and asked it there there were any other answers.....I was near the back of the room naturally....and was the only one to hold up a hand....and said "Zero to the third-power". I think he and I were the only ones in the room grinning at that point in time. He then wasted 45 minutes talked about the value of zero. I doubt if the class learned anything that entire year on math.....except the value of zero.

For some guys....who have had BAD women experiences and BAD dates (note caps)....there is a necessity to build filters and weed out problems in life....namely, women. So to help those understand the magnificent forty-four natural and pure Bama filters....I will list them (please, this is a guy's listing as he looks for the "perfect" woman):

1. Must not have attended any NASCAR event ever or even watched it on TV.
2. Must have limited or no big interest in camping, unless this is RV-camping, which is is totally different.
3. Must not have any strong Baptist tendencies. You can call yourself a Baptist, but if you show any of the "strong-willed" stuff....you are filtered out.
4. Must not have any relatives currently in prison.
5. Must not be on any medication other than allergy pills.
6. Must generally have all of your teeth.
7. Must not be a hardcore left-wing liberal democrat.
8. Must open-minded enough to listen to NPR but not take it too serious.
9. Must remember all of the Bonanza characters.
10. Must not be of a cult (to include Catholics, Jehovahs, and Mormons).
11. Must be educated beyond high school but not have a Harvard or Yale degree. Must have a degree that is of some value (not English literature).
12. Must not be bi-polar.
13. Must drink your whiskey from a glass, but you can drink your beer from a can or bottle.
14. Must not have any real feelings for NCAA football....other than watching an occasional game on TV.
15. Must be capable of wearing a dress, although once or twice a year is sufficient.
16. Must not have problems with guys who drink coffee or tea a fair amount.
17. Must be willing to watch Fox news for 30 minutes a day.
18. Would be preferable that you don't listen to Rush Limbaugh more than fifteen minutes a day.
19. Would be preferable that you cook but no strange exotic dishes, no hot spicy dishes, and nothing that requires sitting on sofa pillows in the living room. Would be best not to have any recipes involving Tabasco.
20. Must be capable of taking sarcasm and dishing it out. In fact, a balance of 24-hours a day of sarcasm will get you extra bonus points.
21. Must not have any relatives in mental institutes.
22. Would be preferable that you could hang out with guitar or Bluegrass freaks.
23. Must be capable of reading newspapers.
24. Would be preferable that you not have strong beliefs in aliens, UFOs, bigfoot, abductions, Loch Nessie or Atlantis....although you could just mention one of these per week, it'd be acceptable.
25. Must be capable of being charming and witty...in fact....very witty would be bonus points.
26. Must not have bizarre and radical mood changes that swing every three hours.
27. Must not freak out if a purchase of a $1500 guitar was in order.
28. Must be adaptable to a Mazda Miata lifestyle.
29. Must be capable of watching Lost, Monk, Doctor House, and Battlestar Galacticia. Would be higher points if you've got all of the various years.
30. Must be capable of living around neighbors who are a bit...."unhinged" but safe.
31. Must not be from third-world cities....like Bogota, Lima, New Orleans, and Mexico City.
32. Can have a couple of tattoos in good taste but no tongue rings, lip rings, or exotic piercings of an unusual degree (must be explained in detail prior to first date).
33. Would be preferable if you were capable installing Microsoft packages.
34. Would be preferable if you could at least iron some clothing.
35. Can not smoke filtered or unfiltered, and no cigars.
36. Must prefer a higher-grade of beer than Ole Milwaukee or Bud.
37. If you spend more than $2000 on clothing a year, it will require an sensible explanation.
38. Must not have any issues with pick-ups.
39. Would be preferable if dancing wasn't important....real unimportant.
40. Would be preferable if your relatives lived at least two states over.
41. Would be preferable if you had a sense of humor....in fact....must have sense of humor.
42. Would be preferable if you've read the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy at least once or twice.
43. Must be capable of understanding an engineer's state of mind.
44. Would be preferable if you didn't want to move to California....ever.

So, this is what a normal guy from Bama.....would use for a filter.....especially if they'd go through a few BAD dates and met a few women that were "unhinged". You have to understand, from an engineer's state of mind....filtering is necessary....otherwise, you get a bunch of things that are issues.

This topic comes up because I had to go off to a job interview in Stuttgart this week and sit in the car with my office-coworker, who we will refer to as Ms. New Orleans (NO, for short). I had to spend four hours in the car with the chatty Ms. NO. After I came back, I shot off an email to my brother on the entire job interview experience and description of the hotel....and then I mentioned just two or three lines of Ms. NO.

My brother's interest peaked up. He asked about the chatty Ms. NO. So I laid in forty lines. Yes, I described the witty and charming Ms. NO in Bama-detail. My brother, the engineer, was all peppy.....she sounds "hot" (that's Bama for she might actually pass the 44-filter test).

Then I squashed his hopes.....she was from New Orleans, thus violating the idea of being from a third-world city.....and she was a former or lite player of the Catholic religion (thus being in the cult group possibly). Sadly, this set my brother back a notch again.

So the positive is....the 44-filter concept holds strong and prevents BAD dates or the potential of meeting another nut.

Letters From Ripley

Inspired by Letters from Seneca (124-essay effort) that brought Stoicism out of the shadows.

Stoicism is the concept of accepting pains, woes, sorrows, troubles, luck, gains, losses, and life as being "part of nature". Whatever happened yesterday...simply happened....I can learn from it, gain from it, and then just accept it. No matter what the score was....there is tomorrow and I simply need to put my best foot forward.

Me?

There is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at the flood,
leads onto fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in
shallows, and in miseries. So I intend to ride out this flood upon my
virtual porch in Ripley and see where this "flood of life" takes
me...whilst sipping ice cold tea with a chunk of lemon...pondering the
comings and goings of life.